The author of Guitar Hero makes a gamepad for Android
The company, founded by the creator of the iconic Guitar Hero series, received $6 million in investments to develop a gamepad for mobile devices. Read about the next trend among small OEM companies, the pros and cons of gamepads and the console-mobile future in our material.
Technically, modern mobile devices are not inferior to consoles of previous generations. We have already written about this more than once. The problem is that playing on them, as once on the NES, Sega Mega Drive or Sony PlayStation, will not work. The fault is the lack of physical buttons on most smartphones and tablets. Many people have tried to solve this problem by releasing a special gamepad for them. Another thing is that it did not lead to any significant financial results.
Charles Huang, who is one of the authors of the musical hit Guitar Hero, was not stopped by this fact. Perhaps for the reason that his competitors approached the issue “from the wrong side”. And not so much in implementation, so much in positioning.
Huang’s previous project was wildly successfulIf you think about it (or even better, try it), playing on a tablet with a gamepad is still a pleasure.
The “tablet” has to be moved away from itself, and its screen is small (we are not talking about the smartphone screen), nothing can be seen on it at a distance. It is simply impossible to hold two gadgets in your hands at the same time. In other words, an idea that seemed very promising turned out to be nothing.
The authors of Ouya were the first to go further, who decided to make a full-fledged console on Android 4.0 with the stuffing of a modern smartphone. Huang approached the question differently.
His idea is based on creating a full-fledged gamepad for mobile devices, not inferior to one for Xbox 360 or PS3, connect it to a mobile device, and the latter, in turn, connect an HDMI cable to a TV. The development of such a device is currently being carried out by his Green Throttle Games team in California. It is supposed to support the following Android devices: Google Nexus 4, HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S II, S III, Galaxy Note, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10.
This is how everything will look ideally: in the hands of the console, on the screen – the game, somewhere on the side of the smartphoneApparently, the team’s goal is to overtake the emerging trend – the displacement of consoles from the gaming market by mobile devices.
The struggle for the user lying in front of the big screen at home is the next stage of the confrontation of platforms. The question is, when will it really come and will it come at all?
Investors from Trinity Ventures, who invested $ 6 million in Green Throttle Games, apparently believe in the picture painted by Huang.
For us on App2Top, it is not entirely clear how the company, currently consisting of 12 people, is going to deal with, let’s call it, double fragmentation. It is clear that games launched on TV screens will not look nearly as good as on small displays of mobile devices. In addition, each application previously released purely for touch control, the developers of the original games will need to be redone at least in order to remove the painted sticks. In other words, almost every application of Green Throttle Games will need to communicate with its developers.
Developers smile: after investing $6, it’s hard not to do it This seems to be understood in the company itself.
They are already negotiating with a number of teams. The support of Green Throttle, in turn, has already been announced by nWay, Free Range Games, Mercenary Technology and Monstrous.
Yes, the company is also working on the Arena application, which will become a hub for applications that support working with the gamepad.
